Black Britannia: There Is a Long, Racist History of State Surveillance of Black Communities

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The current Black Lives Matter protests are once again exposing issues of police racism and brutality, not just in the US but in the UK too. Indeed, punitive measures towards black communities have been enacted by the British state, and its auxiliary branches, since the advent of Commonwealth migration, with government anxieties reaching their peak in the late 1960s and ’70s.

Secret intelligence documents from 1967 to 1970 unearth the unbelievable steps taken by the British government to control Black Power mobilisation.

Despite these efforts, the British movement witnessed one of the most effective instances of anti-racist collective action and caused great anxieties for the British state. Fears over the activities of Black Power activists led the government to undertake an extensive and covert surveillance mission, aimed at suppressing any challenges to its authority.

In 2010, while conducting research for their biography on former British Black Panther Darcus Howe, historians Dr Robin Bunce and Paul Field were the first to discover the existence of this surveillance operation and access Special Branch documents on the British Black Power movement.

In subsequent years, through the use of the Freedom of Information Act, Bunce and Field forced government departments to release more surveillance files. These documents, which have been archived by The Special Branch Project, expose the true fragility of the British government during the years 1967 to 1970.

As well as highlighting the fears of previous governments, these files provide a unique opportunity to not only reflect on past surveillance strategies but also situate and understand them within our present-day political climate.


The threat of the US.


State surveillance of Black Power activity in Britain began in response to the increasingly fraught race relations in the US, with the government fearing a similar wave of black radicalism and revolutionary fervour spreading overseas.

The 1960s marked a rise in anti-racist confrontations in America, and by 1966, sectors of the black community adopted a more militant stance, leading to the creation of the radical group the Black Panther Party. The assassination of civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr led to increased advocacy of black radicalism, with the shock of his death, in the eyes of many, exposing the ineffectiveness of the non-violent resistance he championed.



Panicked by the anti-racist mobilisation in the US, and anxious about its own status as its colonial influence waned, the British state began monitoring the domestic influence of black radical politics. Black people’s presence in Britain could be seen as a kind of transgression of colonial boundaries, with ‘subjects’ now in the territory of the imperial ‘motherland’. If this wasn’t threatening enough in the eyes of the imperialist state, the prospect of the younger generation adopting militant anti-authoritarianism propelled it into action.

Indeed, the threat of black radicalism was presumed so high that a Black Power Desk was formed by order of then-Home Secretary Roy Jenkins and specifically tasked with collecting intelligence on black political groups in the UK.

In the early years, the Black Power Desk’s concerns were on a smaller scale, focussing on Hyde Park revolutionaries such as Michael de Freitas, Roy Sawh and Obi Egbuna. A 1967 letter, from a legal secretary at the Royal Courts of Justice, addressed to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) acknowledged the “marked effect” that these speakers had on “susceptible coloured persons in the audience”.

Sawh’s controversial, yet humorous, speeches included analyses of imperialism, domestic legislation and the history of black subjugation. The content of his speeches often resulted in tense confrontations with some of his white audiences.



Government documents spoke of the Metropolitan police’s fear that “extremist white persons will take the law into their hands” if prosecutions were not made on Sawh and other rebellious speakers.

An anonymous letter from seven “peaceful inhabitants”, also written to the DPP, illustrates the grave threat to Sawh’s safety. In the letter, the authors threatened to “beat this black bastard to death [or] kill him” if no action was taken. The limited cache of documents that the government approved for release fail to explain what action was eventually taken. However, the composers of the letter clearly failed in their mission to silence Sawh as he continued with his incendiary speeches.


A shift in focus.


By 1968, the attention of the authorities, in particular the Home Office, turned towards Americans residing in Britain. Secret documents show the government alarmed at the “activities of certain [white] dissidents”, such as Allen Ginsburg, who was involved in setting up the ‘Anti-University of London’, which taught subjects like Black Power and ‘Madness and Revolution’.

The state was also highly concerned about the frequency with which African American revolutionaries, such as Stokley Carmichael and Malcolm X, were visiting Britain, given the fervour of the Black Power movement in the US. Home Office documents stated that “for prestige purposes, the [British] movement needs a visible connection with Black Power in America” and suggested that black Britons may “try and capitalise on the proposed visit of negro lawyer” Floyd McKissick, who was known for his fiery anti-racist delivery.

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Malcolm X on a visit to Birmingham

Indeed, Carmichael’s Black Power advocacy at an international radical conference at the Camden Roundhouse resulted in Jenkins banning him from re-entering the country.

Despite the intense level of surveillance of black radicals, state documents repeatedly played down the immediate threat posed by the Black Power movement in Britain.

However, in an interesting foresight, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee Denis Greenhill warned of the possibility of increased black radicalism in the 1970s. Greenhill wrote that in subsequent years, Britain would have a wave of “coloured youngsters” leaving school who “unlike their parents will expect full equality of treatment, job opportunities and the [ability] to buy decent houses”. If denied equal treatment, he cautioned, “they will form educated and frustrated minority groups [who could become] targets for communist subversion and may spontaneously develop pro-black and anti-white attitudes”.


Global concerns.


The state’s anxieties, however, were not solely focussed within Britain. In 1969, the First International Black Conference was announced, this time drawing the attention of prime minister Harold Wilson. The pan-African unity displayed by the conference highlighted the globality of the black struggle, thus posing a further threat to Britain as a dwindling colonial power. Indeed, the conference itself was held in Bermuda on account of it being one of the last remaining colonial strongholds – to this day, the island falls under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the UK.

Amidst calls from the Bermuda government to ban the event, Wilson backed the Ministry of Defence’s plan to send 80 police officers and marines to standby in case there were “disturbances” Bermuda’s authorities could not control. Despite the imposing police presence, however, the state’s concerns were ultimately not realised.

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A classified report on the Bermuda conference


Infiltrating the movement.


With the movement at its peak, Black Power had taken firm hold in the British metropole in 1970. As black radicalism spread across the country, the police response, in turn, intensified. Indeed, documents from the Black Power Desk at the time illustrate the meticulous operation that was at play.

Home Office intelligence teams profiled key activists such as Althiea Jones-Lecointe, deemed “the brains” behind the movement, and Barbara Beese, a “leading member” of the group, who had close associations with actor and “benefactress” Vanessa Redgrave. Meanwhile, Darcus Howe, who later went on to become a Channel 4 broadcaster, was accused of being a “writer of black extremist literature”.

These documents offer a glimpse into the strategies employed by the British state in their attempts to limit the impact of black radicalism. It is even implied that informants were used, with certain members or close allies of the group offering information to Special Branch investigators.

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Altheia Jones-Lecointe and her husband Eddie looking at the Special Branch documents

Leila Howe, a former member of the Black Unity and Freedom Party, spoke of the group’s awareness of informants within their organisation. “We were always aware of being infiltrated,” she recalled. The organisation’s central committee, having witnessed similar instances of informants in the US, met “secretly away from certain members”.

Despite these sophisticated attempts to infiltrate the movement, the trial of the Mangrove Nine in August 1970, dealt a seemingly fatal blow to the police’s operation. The victory of the nine black radical defendants in challenging police racism and brutality was a landmark moment in transforming racial justice in the UK and demonstrated the state’s inability to control or eradicated black radicalism.

However, according to Field, far from being shut down, the Desk may have instead become a part of the Metropolitan police’s undercover unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, which infiltrated and disrupted social justice movements, including black civil rights groups, well into the 1990s.

These unearthed documents are just a small selection from a far larger catalogue of Special Branch and Home Office files. The restricted access to this intelligence makes it hard to truly understand the scope of the state’s mission. Despite being limited in membership, Black Power groups in Britain appear to have caused considerable anxiety for the government. However, as Field suggests, state surveillance of anti-racists groups and black communities was not just limited to the 1960s and 70s.


The present-day surveillance state.


Since the height of Special Branch’s surveillance into black radical activity, police powers have broadened in their scope, taking on new and increasingly advanced forms.

From using undercover officers to spy on the family of murdered black teen Stephen Lawrence’s family to the ongoing deployment of controversial stop-and-search powers, the state’s surveillance strategies are not merely limited to black radical activists but extend to the community at large.

In November 2019, prime minister Boris Johnson seemed to echo the sentiments of his predecessor and architect of the ‘hostile environment’, Theresa May, when he supported expanding police search powers. These policies are reminiscent of the infamous Sus stop-and-search laws, which Black Power groups passionately resisted in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, just two weeks ago, Middle East Eye reported that the Home Office had been running veiled social media campaigns, aimed at young girls, as part of its counter-terrorism campaign.

The advancement of modern technology has served only to further facilitate the police in its surveillance of marginalised communities. Civil liberties campaigners, such as Big Brother Watch, have voiced their opposition to the police’s intention to use facial recognition technologies to detect suspected criminals.

As has been frequently pointed out, such measures will disproportionately impact black, asian and minority ethnic communities, due to institutional and technological racism. And with the rise of anti-racist collectivism currently taking place, one can only imagine the steps the government may be taking to prevent further protests and challenges to authority.

In order to meaningfully address decades of systemic racism, governing institutions in Britain must show transparency in their community operation and be willing to redress their years of punitive policing of black people.

Bryan Knight is an oral historian and journalist based in London. He hosts the Tell A Friend podcast, discussing current affairs and historical topics.

This article is the second instalment in Black Britannia, a series which reflects on the country’s black radical history.

Read part one here.
 

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Black Britannia: Today’s Anti-Racist Movement Must Remember Britain’s Black Radical History

Days after the police murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement resurged with global momentum.

Protesters all over the world have taken to the streets to protest police racism and brutality, and to demand change.

In Britain, the BLM movement has exposed the country’s widespread colonial amnesia, along with a cultural reluctance to self-reflect. Fortunately, a significant number of Britons have shown solidarity with the American movement, reigniting a much-needed dialogue around race.

The recent toppling of statues in the UK and across the world demonstrates the importance of engaging with colonial histories. However, it is vital that we remember not only tales of oppression but also ones of resistance, honouring and learning from our anti-racist predecessors and situating the current resistance within the broader struggle for equality.

Today in Britain, Black communities face institutional racism, police brutality and chronic community underfunding. 50 years ago, Black Britons were fighting these same evils. Indeed, it was in this same context that Black radicalism found ground in the 1970s.

Taking inspiration from their American counterparts, young British radicals formed collectives and organisations in defence of their community. In 1968, Eddie Lecointe, Peter Martin and Nigerian playwright Obi Egbuna founded the British Black Panther movement. Egbuna went on to write Destroy This Temple, which served as his Black Power manifesto.

Following Egbuna’s deportation, Altheia Jones-Lecointe became the de-facto leader. Under her leadership, the Panther movement took direct action against the police, and, in the process, successfully challenged the brutality of the Metropolitan Police and the British state.

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Black Power demonstration and march, West London 1970. (UK National Archives)

The Mangrove Nine Trial was a landmark moment in transforming racial justice in the UK, serving as both a victory for the Black community and an embarrassment for governing institutions.

The trial focussed on the police harassment of the Mangrove restaurant in west London’s Notting Hill area. Owned by Frank Crichlow, a Trinidad-born community activist who was known in London as a godfather of Black radicalism, the Mangrove was the heart of the Caribbean community, known to attract both Black and white radical thinkers.

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The Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill. (UK National Archives)

Due to Critchlow’s high profile in Notting Hill, police, led by corrupt officer Frank Pulley, raided his restaurant 12 times between January 1969 and July 1970, describing the Mangrove as not only a drug den but also a haunt for “criminals, ponces and prostitutes”.

As a result, London’s Black community joined forces with the Panthers to demonstrate against police harassment.

Armed with anti-racist placards and chanting for Black liberation, the demonstrators marched to three local police stations. But what started out as a peaceful protest soon intensified into a violent confrontation, after demonstrators were met with two hundred officers “lined in military formation”, as Darcus Howe, one of the Mangrove Nine, recalled.

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Black Power demonstration and march, West London, August 9, 1970. (UK National Archives)

It would later be known that the Black Power Desk, a surveillance group in the Metropolitan police’s Special Branch, covertly collected information on the Panthers before and during the demonstration. The Met’s meticulous surveillance of the group spoke to the Panthers’ ability to pose a real challenge to the racist state.

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According to the National Archives, photographs like the one pictured above were “used by the police to suggest that key allies of the Black Power movement were implicated in planning and inciting a riot”.

Facing a total of 32 charges, the most serious being incitement to riot, were Barbara Beese, Rupert Boyce, Frank Crichlow, Rhodan Gordon, Darcus Howe, Anthony Innis, Altheia Jones-LeCointe, Rothwell Kentish and Godfrey Millett – a mix of both Black Panther members and other community activists.

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Barbara Beese, a member of the Black Panthers, and one of the original Mangrove Nine. (UK National Archives)

During the trial, the defendants came up with an effective strategy that honoured the tenets of Black radicalism: self-representation.

Both Jones-Lecointe and Howe took the unprecedented decision to defend themselves, whilst radical civil rights lawyer Ian MacDonald QC helped synchronise the legal defence of the Nine.

The group met regularly during the 55-day trial, studying key texts by Black intellectuals such as C.L.R James and Walter Rodney. In a 1973 documentary, the Nine emphasised the importance of taking a comprehensive approach in building their defence, linking their struggle with those being fought by African Americans and also Black nationalists in the colonies.

Despite their request for an all-Black jury being denied, the Nine strategised a way to get through to the white working-class jury members.

In the documentary, MacDonald spoke about how the defendants invoked the history of transportation in Britain. This line of argument was used to illustrate how the establishment had historically devised ways of punishing and suppressing the working class. The Nine went on to attack the layout of the courtroom, pointing out the disparate class divisions that existed between the jury and the judge, who presided at a higher post.

By rooting their argument in class struggle, the Nine was able to demonstrate how the racist, capitalist system not only oppressed Black Britons but the working class more broadly; that, ultimately, this was a shared struggle.

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The British Black Panther Movement’s Freedom News 1970. (UK National Archives)

The fight for the Nine to go free was a concerted effort, which relied on the support of other groups such as the Black Liberation Front, Black Freedom and Unity Party and the Racial Adjustment Action Society. These Black power groups united in solidarity with the Nine, along with allied media publications, by attending subsequent demonstrations and raising funds for the defence.

In a shock outcome for both the defence and the prosecution, the jury sided with the Nine in accepting that there was no attempt to incite a riot or violent altercation. The verdict led the judge to take the unprecedented step of acknowledging racial prejudice in the Metropolitan police.

The trial’s outcome was unprecedented, not only in exposing racism within state institutions, but also leading to the enactment of drastic legal reform.

The Nine not only succeeded in defending the rights of Black people, but they also transformed British jurisprudence.

Whilst the verdict was a huge victory for the Nine, giving credibility to the Panthers as a group and legitimacy to the wider cause, it also, unfortunately, led the state to tighten its reins to prevent similar challenges to authority. For example, new measures were introduced to limit the powers which defendants could exercise during court proceedings.

Today’s generation of anti-racists must remember and learn from those who fought and made gains in fighting discrimination in prior decades. Despite the British education system’s failure to teach this anti-racist history, it is our collective responsibility to fill the gaps in our knowledge.

We stand on the shoulders of those who paved the way for us. The Mangrove Nine succeeded in their mission by seeing the bigger picture and understanding that all forms of oppression are linked. Reflecting on the solidarity shown by other organisations highlights the urgent need for activists and industries to unite in the face of today’s fight against racism.

In order to find tangible solutions and maintain the momentum for change, it is vital we recognise the importance of self-reflection and self-education.
 

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Black Britannia: The Race Today Collective Demonstrated the Radical Potential of Journalism

Between 1973-88, the ground-breaking Race Today journal was at the epicentre of the struggle for racial justice in Britain, highlighting the limitless opportunities and impacts campaigning journalism can have.

With the struggle against police racism and brutality currently happening across the world, it is vital that young activists learn about the recent history of Black Radicalism in Britain, including the Black Radical press, in order to harness the revolutionary potential of the media in the fight for racial justice.

A new direction.

Between 1973 and 1988, the Race Today journal and its collective of writers passionately fought police brutality, challenged racist institutions and, by adopting intersectional politics, linked the experiences of Black communities in Britain with other struggles to illustrate the interconnectedness of race, sex and class exploitation.

Under the controversial editorship of activist and former Black Panther Darcus Howe and, from 1985, his wife Leila Hassan, Race Today became a central voice for the anti-racist Black community in London.

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Darcus Howe and Leila Hassan.

Race Today, however, was not always a radical, anti-racist publication. Founded in 1958, and the monthly output of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), originally the publication was far more scholarly and conservative in scope.

In protest of the overly academic and politically neutral stance adopted during the early editorship of Peter Watson, and the broader editorial committee, in 1972, Race Today staff, led by IRR librarian Ambalavaner Sivandandan, staged an internal coup, wrestling control from the cautious IRR management council in favour of a more radical direction.

Howe embodied that new direction. A seasoned journalist, he not only had experience in campaigning media through his work for the Black Panther party’s Freedom News but was also the editor of the short-lived Black Dimension journal. Howe’s media experience, combined with his extensive organising and political knowledge of Black liberation struggles and colonial legacies, ultimately made him a perfect appointee to execute this new radical vision.

Indeed, as the Guardian noted at the time, Howe was tasked with “steer[ing] the magazine from its quasi-academic origins towards the front lines of racial politics”. In doing so, he took great inspiration from his great-uncle and political mentor C.L.R James.

James, a Trinidadian historian and socialist intellectual, rejected ethnic nationalism and instead advocated unity between the white working classes and non-white communities, believing that more could be achieved by harnessing the power of a broad-based alliance.

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C.L.R James and Darcus Howe.

Inspired by James’ book Facing Reality, Howe was, in his own words, conscious of making the journal a platform for grassroots movements, “as opposed to [their] vanguard”. In that vein, Howe, in his first editorial, set out his commitment to centring the voices of Black and working-class communities instead of speaking for them. He clarified that under his leadership, Race Today would “opens its pages to the tendency which seeks to give a theoretical clarification to independent grass-roots self-activity with a view to furthering its development”.

In a final split from the IRR, Howe covertly moved the journal’s offices from an institutional building in King’s Cross to a squatted building in Brixton; the heart of the Black community.

The relocation came about as a result of increasing tensions between Howe and Sivanandan, with the former fundamentally disagreeing with the latter’s stance that Black people were victims.

Aided by fellow contributor Farrukh Dhondy, Howe surreptitiously packed up the journal’s office and relocated it to a recently squatted building on Shakespeare Road. The building was sourced with the help of former Black Panther member Olive Morris, who organised a further squat operation on Railton Road, which eventually became the settled offices for the collective.

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The Race Today offices.

Now free from all editorial constraints, and with the explicit Marxist goal to “record and recognise” workers’ experiences, Race Today’s coverage was consistently international in scope, analysing and drawing links between anti-colonial liberation movements, class struggles and socialist alternatives to state organisation across the world. In this vein, stories of state harassment of the Black community in the UK would appear alongside and in dialogue with discussions around the plight of minority workers in the global south.

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An issue of Race Today from October 1976.

Heeding the advice of James, Howe was particularly cautious of ensuring the journal’s national output was not too London-centric. As well as maintaining strong links with the Bradford Black Collective, who had been fighting local police racism, the journal extended its networks to the Republican struggle in Ireland. As a show of solidarity, Howe featured a short story by Bobby Sands, a volunteer from the Irish Republican Army, who was taking part in a hunger strike during the Irish civil war.

A trademark feature of the journal was its frequent inclusion of first-hand accounts by ordinary workers. Rather than speaking for working people, as most publications did, Howe took inspiration from another of James’ comrades, journalist Raya Dunayevskaya, who used the term “full fountain pen” to describe the process of typing up and transcribing the testimonies of working people to ensure they were accurately and intimately captured.

Race Today was not just about worker’s struggles however, the organisation believed that culture and politics were inextricable, with liberation movements and cultural movements emerging hand in hand. As a result, the journal was committed to celebrating and platforming Black self-expression, engaging with the cultural explosion of art, poetry, music, literature and even sports that were happening during the 1970s and ‘80s.

As well as platforming the works of literary icons such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and Ntozake Shange, the collective was also involved in organising cultural events like the International Book Fair of Radical and Third World Books. The group even formed their own masquerade band known as the Race Today Mangrove Renegade Band with the support of musicians from Ladbroke Grove.

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A member of the Race Today Renagade Band at Notting Hill Carnival to celebrate the African liberation movement against Portugal.

From the very outset, the collective put its organisational weight behind countless grassroots justice campaigns: from the Brockwell Park Three, three young black men who were severely beaten and arrested by police at a firework night in south London, to George Lindo, who was framed for robbery in Bradford.

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A protest to free George Lindo.

But the group’s largest organisational effort came in 1981 when it organised the Black People’s Day of Action in protest of the police response to the now-infamous New Cross Fire, which saw 13 Black young people at a house party killed, after the residence they were in was bombed. In the aftermath of the fire, the Black community was certain that this was a racist attack due to the notorious National Front activity in the area.

As a result, the group organised the New Cross Massacre Action Committee and the subsequent Day of Action. The protest march, which saw 20,000 predominantly Black people take to the streets, placed considerable pressure on the investigating police and demonstrated the strength of the Black community. Not only did the march bring London to a standstill, but it became the largest demonstration of Black Britons in the country’s history.

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Protestors at the Black People’s Day of Action.

But significantly, the group’s support was not extended exclusively to Black causes and they rallied behind other marginalised communities as well. For them, ‘Blackness’ was understood, not just as an ethnic signifier, but as a politically unifying term that encompassed all people of colour who had been exploited by colonialism and oppressed by racism and capitalism.

To that end, the collective supported various Asian led struggles: from the successful three-month-long workers strike against workplace racism at Imperial Typewriters in Leicester (in which the journal published eye-witness accounts and analyses) to the Bengali housing campaign that was fought throughout the mid-1970s.

During this landmark struggle, the collective, led by South Asian members Dhondy and Mala Sen, supported the Bengali community in their fight for better housing conditions and against evictions by Greater London Council (GLC). This support took the form of organising protests and supporting the Bengali Housing Action Group (BHAG) in their housing campaign, with the group instrumental in helping to organise the largest squat in British history in London’s East End.

The organisation further aided the squatters, not only by frequently printing first-person accounts from the Bengali community in its journal but also by sending legal consultants to assess the legality of their squat action. As a result of a three-year campaign of direct action with the BHAG, the collective was able to achieve a near-impossible victory: an entire community was re-housed by the GLC.

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An issue of Race Today from July/Aug 1978.

After 15 years of groundbreaking reporting and activism, Race Today’s final issue was published in 1988. With Howe’s attention shifting from print journalism to broadcast, his burgeoning television career – particularly with Channel 4 – resulted in him stripping back his editorial duties. And as a result, in 1985, Hassan was appointed the new editor. But with Howe stepping back, and the journal already under financial difficulties, it wasn’t long until the journal put out its final issue.

Despite this, Howe was initially committed to keeping the collective alive, arguing that it should continue its important campaigning work. However, this all changed in 1989 with James’ death, which, according to former member Linton Kwesi Johnson “created a pall over everything”. At this point, Johnson recalled, he “didn’t think the leadership’s heart was in the organisation any more”, and indeed Howe himself believed that the group had “exhausted the moment”. With the will to continue gone, the Race Today collective was formally disbanded on 7 April 1991.

Remembering Race Today.

Despite being so widely read and influential in the 1970s and ’80s, now Race Today is difficult to access, with the journal and collective’s work omitted from popular accounts of the era.

Setting out to remedy this, in 2019, radical publisher Pluto Press worked with former members of the collective to release an anthology featuring key reports from the radical journal. Former Race Today editor and co-publisher of the anthology Leila Hassan spoke of the current relevance of the revolutionary publication, saying:

“I hope this anthology will bring to a new generation the radical Black movements of the ‘70s and ‘80s which have hereto been under-reported and are rarely known by current activists and people interested in race and politics.”

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The Race Today Collective, May 2019. From Left to Right: Farrukh Dhondy, Michael Cadette, Jean Ambrose, Claudius Hillman, Pat Dick and Leila Hassan.

The journal’s political analysis, and the action taken by its editorial collective, demonstrates the power of intersectionality when critiquing systemic oppression and campaigning for social justice – a lesson that should be heeded by the current Black Lives Matter movement.

And while political Blackness is now seen as a controversial ideology, today’s activists would do well to think about creative ways in which to build broad-based alliances during anti-racist struggles, so that prejudice of all kinds can be effectively combatted.

Race Today was a truly radical publication and within the pages of its anthology lies a rich history of Britain’s Black radical tradition. The journal was not an instructive periodical, but rather a conduit for Black self-expression. Dhondy perfectly summarises the legacy of the collective as being “instrumental in the strategic self-organisation of new communities in Britain”.

The evolution of the publication offers today’s activists and journalists inspiration for transcending the conventions of traditional journalism. Far from merely writing about movements, the Race Today journal and collective was actively part of them, working to harness the truly radical potential of the media to bring about real and meaningful change.
 
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